


A Monstrous Love

by Philosopherscribe



Category: Crimson Peak (2015)
Genre: BDSM, Dubious Consent, F/F, F/M, Femslash, Gothic, Horror, Knifeplay, Romance, Sibling Incest, Wax Play
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-13
Updated: 2021-03-13
Packaged: 2021-03-21 16:01:47
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,278
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30024270
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Philosopherscribe/pseuds/Philosopherscribe
Summary: Thomas and Lucille kill Alan and decide to share Edith between them. Edith starts playing them against one another.
Relationships: Edith Cushing/Lucille Sharpe, Edith Cushing/Thomas Sharpe, Lucille Sharpe/Thomas Sharpe
Comments: 2
Kudos: 7





	A Monstrous Love

**Author's Note:**

> This is rather heavily inspired by an old Harry Potter fanfic called A Spell To Turn Tigers To Butter by Amanuensis. Other sources of inspiration include a Crimson Peak fanfic called A Butterfly and the Moth by anarfea, The Red Necklace by Sally Gardner, and an Indian movie called Kannezhuthi Pottum Thottu.

  
  


*********

Ghosts are real. But I learned the hard way that the living are far more frightening. 

“Edith,” Alan said in a low, urgent whisper, “I’m here to take you away!” 

I nodded feebly. Good old Alan! My oldest friend had tracked me here, all the way in the snow. He’d always been so fond of me. I understood now why Father wanted me to marry him. If there was anything I learned in Crimson Peak, it was that men were seldom who they seemed. And if I was being honest with myself, I had found Alan a bit dull when I was a girl, but he was turning out to be much more than I ever imagined. Thomas had dazzled me with pretty words and a waltz with a pretty candle, but all that glamor hid a monster. My first impression had been right. He was a parasite with a title, an aristocrat who lived off the money and blood of the women he married! And they weren’t just dead bodies in the vats, they were human beings and they had names. Pamela Upton, Margaret McDermon, and Enola Sciotti. They were trying to warn me. They had all been trying to tell me the truth. 

The depth of my husband’s betrayal cut more deeply than any of my stab wounds. How could I have been so fooled? I was so proud of my learning, of all that I had read, I thought I was so much smarter than other girls. Tears welled up in my eyes and Alan held me to his chest. I breathed him in. He smelled like home, back in America. 

“It seems we’re getting emotional, doctor,” Lucille said. 

Alan sprang to his feet. “I’m going to take her to the hospital.”

“That won’t be necessary.”

“I’m afraid it is,” he said bluntly, “you’ve been poisoning her.” 

The silence lingered between us like all the ghosts of Allerdale Hall. 

Alan unfolded the newspaper in his pocket. “Edith: Front page, Cumberland Ledger. Lady Beatrice Sharpe was murdered in the bathtub. One brutal blow almost split her head in two. No suspect was ever arrested, and only the children were in the house. The truth was too horrible to consider.” 

I looked around. Lucille and Thomas were very still, very pale. Black hair stood on end. Electric blue and green eyes were gleaming dangerously.

“Sir Thomas, after questioning by the police you were sent to boarding school at twelve,” Alan continued, “as for Lucille, at fourteen they say she was sent to a convent education in Switzerland. But I think a different kind of institution.”

Lucille lunged forward and stabbed him under the arm. I screamed.

She stabbed him again and again until the knife was stuck in his arm. Paralyzed with pain, Alan stumbled and staggered to the door. He opened it, his hands shaking. The winter winds roared in the house and he collapsed, his blood staining the snow.

My dog—Enola’s dog—whimpered. 

“Come here doggie,” Lucille said sweetly, “I said come here!” 

She picked it up. 

She snapped its scruffy little neck with a sickening crunch. 

My world swayed, spun dizzily around me. This was a nightmare, it had to be. This was not happening. 

Thomas was kneeling in front of Alan. 

“If I don’t do it, she will,” he said grimly, “you’re going to die, but you’re a doctor. Show me where it’ll hurt the least.” 

“Alan! NOOOOO!” I cried. 

But Alan had lost too much blood. He nodded and pointed weakly to his chest. 

Thomas ran the knife through his solar plexus. Alan died without ever saying goodbye. 

I screamed and screamed. Alan was dead. He had loved me and I never got a chance to figure out whether I loved him back.

“You’re monsters, both of you!” I shrieked. 

“Edith, listen to me,” Thomas said urgently. 

_You lied to me!_

_I did!_

_You poisoned me!_

_I did._

_“You told me that you loved me!”_

_I do._

I fell silent, not believing him for a second. 

What game was he playing now?

Lucille had returned after dumping Alan and the dog in the vats. I shrank back at the sated look on her face. Her hands were covered in crimson blood. She and Thomas were closing in on me. Their shadows darkened the entire room. 

“For most of my life, my sister was all I had,” Thomas said quietly, “and it was the same for her. Father was a brute. Mother was horrible, she confined us to the attic as children. We were trapped, never allowed to go outside.”

“We were black moths trapped in the dark, forbidden to see the sun,” Lucille intoned, “it was monstrous, it made monsters of us both, but it showed us we were meant for each other. Always together...”

“Never apart.” Thomas finished, looking at her as if she were a cult leader and he was her devoted follower.

“And so one night, when we were young, Lucille and I made a pact: Neither of us would ever fall in love with anyone else,” he explained, “but then I met you, and it happened. I fell in love with you, Edith. You are so different from everyone else.”

His eyes were wide and hopeful.

“I killed the others, of course,” Lucille said in that strange wooden voice, “none of them ever fucked Thomas. But after much begging and pleading, Thomas convinced me to let him keep you. And I agreed. I let him have you, on one condition.”

“And what is that?” I asked, my skin prickling. 

Lucille gave me a look I could not read. “Thomas is mine, everything he owns is mine. And even as children, we shared our toys.”

She placed a hand on my shoulder. “You belong to me now, Edith.” 

I screamed again, silently this time. 

“Don’t you see? We can all be together!” Thomas said, boyish and bright. 

I could not help the question that fell from my lips. “Who killed my Father?”

The smile faded from Thomas’s face, but a ghost of one appeared on Lucille’s. “Such a coarse, condescending man. He loved you. You should have seen his sad face when I smashed it at the sink.”

If I had my pen, the pen Father gave me as a gift, I would have stabbed her in the neck. Lucille lifted her chin and met my gaze in dark triumph. She had always been able to read me better than her brother.

“You have nowhere else to go. This is your home now! And we are all you have left in the living world.” 

I stared at them, Mother’s voice echoing in my head. Tears welled up in my eyes and I hastily wiped them away. 

_Beware of Crimson Peak!_

But I never heeded the warning, not until it was too late. Mother and Father were gone. Alan was gone. And even the little doggie that had belonged to Enola and gave me comfort in this place was gone.

Lucille was right. She and Thomas were all I had left. I was alone, trapped in a haunted house with two monsters. And the ghosts of the dead were my only source of comfort. I gave one last, choked cry.

*********

This is who I am. This is who he is. 

Thomas and I are black moths, we took care of our butterfly. 

I had a feeling he would be a bit soft on the girl on her first night as our personal plaything. And he had already fucked her once, so I was determined to have my turn. Edith was by now thoroughly broken. Her new reality was setting in, and the light in those chocolate brown eyes had been extinguished. She was naked for me on the bed, her body pale and white as milk, but she made no attempt to conceal herself. I hummed the lyrics of the lullaby I used to sing to Thomas when we were young, the one I sang when she caught me fucking him on this bed.

_Let the wind blow kindly_

_In the sails of your dreams_

_And the moon light your journey_

_And bring you to me_

I heard her breath hitch, her pale breasts quivering, and her golden hair was like honey, like the moonlight streaming through the window. I thought I would go mad with need. And although I knew she would obey my every wish, I took out a pair of handcuffs and bound her to the bed. 

“This will hurt just as much as you think, Edith.”

I intended to hurt her. I always felt closer to Thomas when I hurt him and I was determined it would be the same for this girl. 

The last restraint clamped around her ankle and I took a moment to savor the sight. Thomas was the only other person I had ever had in this position. I slid up the bed and let my weight settle on her body, my eyes drilling into her face, sparkling like a candle.

I was holding a candle in my hand. A Hand of Glory. 

A white candle made from a severed hand dipped in wax. Thomas had made it for me last night. 

“This hand belonged to your friend, the good doctor,” I informed my prisoner, “I cut it off before I pushed him in the vat.”

Her eyes were blank but she didn’t say anything. I didn’t press her for it. I could smell the rage and hatred emanating from her body, and it was intoxicating. 

I set every one of the fingers alight. The flames burned brightly, throwing shadows across my face. I glanced at myself in the mirror and grinned. My hair was so black, the fire made it look like it was tinted with purple and turquoise. My eyes were as green as a snake in the grass. 

The wax was beginning to melt. I angled it over her so that the hot little droplets fell on her body. Flecks of wax trickled on her abdomen, and I wondered if Thomas ever spilled his seed on her like this. I let the dots drip on other sensitive places where I could cause pain: The underside of her arms, the inside of her thighs. Each drop made her cry out, each cry wordless yet sounding as though any moment she would lose control and beg me to stop. Soon the candle was a charred lump, impotent and as powerless to stop me ravishing the girl as the doctor was now. I set it on the table. For a moment, I regretted setting it alight, rather than just shoving the whole hand inside her.

But I hated the doctor, hated him for finding us out, for telling Edith of my past. I wanted to ruin everything Edith could have had with him. I wanted to erase all memory of him from her mind. And I didn’t want any part of his body inside her. 

I caressed her, pushing her up to the head of the bed, so that the flakes of wax hardened and fell onto the sheets. My index finger curled around the bud of her clitoris until she was slippery with cream, her soft gasps like honey, milk, and chocolate. She was perfect. Even more beautiful than my brother. I slid my fingers into her folds, opening her up was like bursting a dam. I did not give her time to adjust or heed her whimpering pleas for mercy. But her folds were wet and I did not do her any lasting harm. I am sure she was grateful for it later.

I drew my blade. The steel blade glittered in the darkness, it was a knife I often used on Thomas during our times together. I twirled it in my hands and her eyes flared. I saw in her face that she was expecting me to fuck her with the blade. But I could have that later. 

I fished out another knife, a smaller knife with a diamond blade, from my drawer and placed the wooden hilt at the end of her cunt. The hilt was hard and cold. I had cut the throats of all my brother’s other wives with this blade. I placed the hilt at the end of her cunt. 

And I fucked her like the whore she was.

She screamed as I drove the hilt of the knife in and out of her cunt. I worked to get the depth I wanted. The impact threw her against the headboard. And I burned with a desire to lie on her chest, to feel the flutter of her heart. 

My grip on the diamond blade was so tight my hand began to bleed. I licked the blood off my hands and found the taste was tangy and sweet. I held the steel blade between my fingers and thumb. I set the edge of it exactly at the periphery of her right nipple. The lightest amount of pressure had crimson well up on both sides of the blade. Her skin looked like a mound of snow stained with the clay deposits from beneath our house. I almost laughed. 

Her darling breast was a crimson peak. 

She was frozen like an icicle, and at first she made no sound. I began to cut along the outline where her blue veins met the paler skin of her breast, and then she made noise. She had assumed I might be planning to cut off the nipple completely. I was not. 

I was careful with my butterfly. 

I chose her right breast because it was a good place to hide a scar, and it was rich with nerve endings and blood vessels. Edith’s eyes were huge and wet. The sounds I wrung from her pretty throat were sweet, steady whimpers. She was looking down at what I was doing. The flow of blood was considerable, for such shallow cuts.

Thomas was an excellent sculptor. He had always made the prettiest dolls for me when we were children. The dolls were my presents, I still treasured every one. It occurred to me that Edith was the most beautiful of them all. 

Beautiful things are fragile. 

I was cutting her in compensation for the sharpness of the blade, it looked and felt much worse than it was. Scarring would be minimal. I would leave the mark until tomorrow night. Tomorrow was my brother’s turn to have her. If Thomas did not want her wearing a mark I had left on our toy, that was his problem. And he could waste his energy healing it. 

~~~~~ 

“The past, Edith. You’re always looking to the past. You won’t find me there. I’m right here.”

She looked at me, startled and apprehensive, and it felt oddly gratifying to throw her own words back at her. The words she whispered to me with so much love that night in that warm little depot, the first time I ever slept with a woman who wasn’t Lucille. That night, I didn’t feel like a moth feeding off a butterfly, but a butterfly in my own right, soaring in the open sky, coupling with my mate. Sipping honey from her folds while the fire crackled, like a field of scarlet flowers. Edith glowed in the firelight, her eyes warm and her cheeks as red as rubies, and I knew then that I loved her.

I wanted her to love me back. As children, Lucille and I became very sharp and smart, in order to avoid beatings from our parents. We compressed ourselves until there was nothing left, nothing for anyone but each other. This was the first time I cared about something other than Lucille and our mining venture. 

My poor wife was now as pale and wan as the butterflies we had seen in America, the dying butterflies that fell to the earth to be devoured by a swarm of black ants. She had been this way since her time with Lucille. Her eyes were soft and wet, something had cracked like a mirror behind them. Truth be told, I understood. Lucille was brutal in her affections, I had learned that over the years. 

I was used to it. Edith was not. 

My wife had become one of the ghosts that haunted the house, like the ghosts of Mother and all my former wives, they were all women who loved me, women I had lied to and cheated and stolen from and murdered. Edith always said ghosts were a symbol of the past. They were my past. And there were nights when Edith lost herself in visions of them, floating up and down the stairs with a candle in her hand.

Lucille was my past and present. She ruled over me like a dark queen, and I would do anything to please her, even share my wife’s body with her against her will. I had no choice, she gave me none. We had promised each other forever and I didn’t dare refuse. But there were days she suffocated me, and I found myself longing for Edith’s uncomplicated goodness. I had loved Lucille my entire life, but now I had fallen for Edith. And like a black moth, I found myself drawn to her light and warmth. It was a strange feeling, a most confusing and exhilarating feeling, it felt like a promise of freedom. Edith gave me a shaky smile. 

“I’m here too,” she said. 

The words were a warm secret between us. I gently pushed her on the bed and we kissed like we did on that magical night. I held her so our chests were flush and we could kiss some more. 

Edith pulled the shirt off my back and I kissed my way up the inside of her creamy thigh. She tasted like melting sugar. My cock slid into her like a knife into butter. She was smooth and she fit beautifully around me. Edith rolled on top of me and rode me like the winter wind. Being with Edith was so different from Lucille, but one thing was the same: She rode me confidently, like she knew what she wanted from my body and how to get it. We made love like we were clandestine lovers rather than husband and wife, our passion smouldering like a lamp underground rather than out in the open. Even now, I couldn’t quite shake the feeling that I was betraying my sister, that I was making my queen a cuckquean. It was maddening. 

It was more romantic than all the times I had been with my sister. 

Edith collapsed on top of me and we came together. Almost at the same time. 

She removed her shift and settled against me, and it was then that I saw the dark line of scab around her right nipple, like a trail of ash left by fire. The shadows in the room were so dark, and I had been so far gone, that it had completely escaped my notice. I felt a flare of irritation, as if Lucille had poked me with one of her knives. I had wanted a night with my wife, and even without being there, Lucille had found a way to come between us again. 

_I’m sorry, Edith._

It occurred to me that Edith deserved better than what I could give her. She certainly didn’t deserve to be played with like a doll and passed like a whore between me and my sister. She had no say in anything and it was all my fault. I felt uncomfortable, but I always closed my eyes to things that made me uncomfortable.

And yet, I did not want my wife marked by anyone else. Not even Lucille. 

And if I were being honest with myself, I would have to admit that my motives for killing that priggish doctor were far less noble than I had let on. True, he was dying and there was little I could do to save him, but Edith had been fond of that dead fool. He had designs on my wife and thought to take her away. 

If he didn’t, maybe I would have tried harder to save him.

In any case, I hated him as much as I hated Edith’s father. I could not bring myself to regret their deaths. No one deserved to die in such pain, that much was true, and I gave the good doctor a quick death, far quicker than the one Lucille had planned for him, but he still deserved his place in the vats with all the others. 

~~~~~

Oh, I was very pleased indeed with the pretty doll Thomas had so generously shared with me. I gave him no choice, of course, but still. She howled and wept and bled under my hands. She groveled at my feet, abased herself before me. 

I made her love me. 

One night, I stood in the doorway to her room. The mirror was shattered, streaked with dust. I had broken it, punched it through with my fist during our struggle when I’d pushed her down the stairs. But now she hummed and stared into it, combing her pale golden hair. I recognized the tune as my lullaby. She looked up at me, gave me a shy smile. And as she passed me by, she flung her hair across my face. Her hair smelled of something floral, like a crimson rose. I was bemused at the sudden change in her. She glanced back at me, blushing, bashful, and ran down the stairs.

I had forgotten how young she was. I had forgotten I once thought her too young for our scheme. 

I spent my days tinkling the keys of the piano, humming my lullaby, a ghostly sound in the silent house, my brain buzzing with sweet thoughts as I invented new ways to torment my lovely sister-in-law. Mother’s portrait glowered down at me and I smiled. She had tried to warn Edith away and failed. I didn’t want her to miss a single thing. 

Edith learned what pleasure there could be in the aftermath of pain. And in earning my satisfaction with her devoted service, with suitable rewards to accompany it.

I used my steel and diamond blades, but I could have just as certain an effect on Thomas by having our little toy marked everywhere with bites.

Ah, that one little snag, like a peel of skin caught against one of my blades. 

That hateful little word _our._

Thomas was mine. Edith was mine. 

I hated feeling left out of what they had together. 

~~~~~ 

Lucille was brutal, so I tended to my wife’s wounds with the greatest care. I wanted to make it up to her. I was so eager to please, I had become the dutiful husband I had always pretended to be. I bathed her, rubbing her body with liniments that smelled of a wild Irish rose. And my heart soared at the sound of her soft sighs of pleasure, the feel of Edith undulating against me. But no matter how hard I tried, she would never drink the tea I offered her. Lucille, and her tea made from red firethorn berries, had burned the fear of poison into her. 

“No, not that,” she murmured, and I could hardly blame her for it. 

I wanted more from her and I got it. Her gleaming smiles. The way she curled into my lap and pressed kisses on the corner of my mouth, nuzzling into my chest like Enola’s little dog. I felt a surge of protectiveness for her when she did that. 

The way she left me little love notes sprinkled with perfume in the nooks and corners of our bedroom. Secret places Lucille would never find. I unfurled the note she’d pressed in my hand, before I left for the day to check the mining machine. 

_I am grateful to you both for keeping me like this,_

_but sometimes, I want to be for you alone._

The words made me feel warm inside. I prepared her tenderly, took her on her belly and back. I particularly liked it when she moaned, _"Yes..."_ each time I penetrated her.

The way she called my name as she came. 

A low, sweet note in the darkness. It was beautiful.

And it made the nights she was with Lucille all the colder. 

~~~~~ 

It had been more than a month since we claimed Edith as our own. And then came the night we left her alone to be with each other, the first night we had been together in a long while. There was no moon, we rocked against each other, clawing and biting every inch of skin we could find. And at first, it was like old times, the times we spent together in the dark attic where Mother kept us prisoner. The only love Thomas and I ever knew was from one another, in these rotting walls. But now Edith hovered like a ghost between us, the image of Edith wandering the corridors with a candle in her hand dancing against my eyelids, and suddenly, Thomas shoved me off. There was a dark look on his face. 

_Lucille, stop it._

_Do we have to do this? Must we?_

I did not say yes. 

I did not glare at him and tell him not to ask me such a question again. 

I struck him. 

I struck him across the face. His neck snapped back with the force of the blow. 

When my perfect brother picked himself up off the bed, one hand on his cheek, watching me—me, who had protected him and taken countless beatings for him when we were children, with that look on his face, I could not let the horror of what I had done keep me frozen, as it was threatening to do. I took his arm carefully, afraid he would think I was about to hurt him again, and apologized. 

I did not try to explain.

Thomas did not make me explain. He did not need to. 

He turned on his heel and strode out of the room. 

~~~~~ 

How long had it been, six weeks since Edith discovered the truth about me and Lucille?

My wife was seated at the table and writing with a flourish, ink splattering adorably on her nose. She looked sweet and intellectual, wearing the glasses I found so sexy on her face. I peered over her shoulder. She was writing about her hero Cavendish. I had long sensed there was a darkness to him.

“I can hear the wheels turning around in your head, Edith,” I teased, “what happens to Cavendish, does he make it all the way through?” 

“I’m afraid not,” she said with a wry smile, “characters talk to you, they transform, they make choices. Choices as to who they become. I’m afraid he made the wrong one and sealed his fate.” 

“That’s rather dismal,” I said lightly. 

“It is,” she agreed, “he was a kind man, and gentle, but he was corrupted and changed by love. The things he did for love were ugly, mad, full of sweat and regret. This love burned him and maimed him, twisted him inside out. It was a horror, and it made a horror out of him.”

The words were whispered, her smile was enigmatic, but even so, something in them filled me with foreboding. And I felt a surge of sympathy for Cavendish. 

“What do you dream of, Edith?” I asked in a low voice. “A kind lover? A pure soul to be redeemed? A wounded bird you can nourish? Perfection? Perfection has no place in love, Edith.”

She was a little started by my vehemence. “Thomas, please! It’s only a story.” 

“I’m not done yet!” I snarled. “You think you’re a writer but you know precious little of the human heart or of love or the pain that comes with it!”

She slapped me hard across the face. Her eyes were pooling with tears. 

I held my burning cheek and gave a bitter smile as I recalled that Lucille had struck me on the other cheek not long ago.

~~~~~ 

I struck my brother, whom I loved most in the world. Because he wanted to take away my whore.

~~~~~ 

I purposely drove my sister and wife to strike me, one after another. Because I had to know they still loved me. 

I had to know I wasn’t going to lose one to the other. 

~~~~~

I dreamt that I placed Edith on my lap while I was sitting on a white bed surrounded by candles. I was a witch, a vampire, a devil in every sense of the word, and she was a sacrifice my brother had left for me. I tore through her body with my bare hands. Her white gown was soaked through with blood. Her pale flesh made squelching noises as my hands found her guts. I plucked out her intestine and placed it around my neck, like a garland of crimson flowers. I ripped out her heart and ate it while it was still fluttering in my grasp. The blood stained my mouth like juice. She moaned, still smiling and serene. I bent down and kissed her tenderly on the lips. 

I was entranced. 

~~~~~

I dreamt that Edith and I were alone, far away from my sister, on a ship sailing for America. The water was blue as my eyes, the sunrise blooming like the heart of a wild Irish rose. Flowery pink and wine red and creamy gold. Edith was like a fairy, something magical, and I was dressed as a prince. We were a prince and princess from some fairy tale. Kissing her was like being kissed by butterfly wings, her mouth felt like the brush of a flower against my lips. Suddenly, the ship sprouted a pair of wings and flew high above the water into the sky. We sailed into the stars and around the world, and we were free. A kaleidoscope of butterflies soared in the sky around us.

I was entranced. 

~~~~~ 

I had her trussed up in an intricate Japanese rope bondage, a technique I’d learned from the book on Japanese erotica I showed her when she first arrived. There were images hidden in the book’s fore edge, carefully dissimulated until you bent the pages. My secret couplings with Thomas had always been inspired by them. And one of the more delectable pictures had inspired the scene before me now. 

Edith had been tied down for several hours. All I had to do was breathe on her clitoris and she came in a fountain of youthful cream. And as I reached for the knot behind her neck, she suddenly arched her back as if I’d dug my blades there.

“Oh, Lucille! Do that again, please!” 

I wasn’t quite aware of what I'd done. "Do what again, dear?” 

“Your fingers in my hair like that, please do it again!”

I remembered my fingers had stroked the hair on the side of her head as I'd reached for the knot.

I carded my hand through her hair again. She arched her neck, keening in pleasure. 

“Oh, Lucille! _Yes…”_ She mewled, and with a response like that, I could hardly keep from doing it again. 

It was affectionate, the way she nuzzled my palm with her nose and lips. 

Not that it didn’t please me. But that this gentleness, of all things, had inspired it...

I did not need to ask who had fostered that particular liking of hers. My brother had always preferred hugs and kisses to knives and blood. 

~~~~~

I drove into her, planting a kiss on her shoulder blade. 

She whimpered, so softly I almost didn’t hear it.

"What was that, darling?" 

A louder whisper.

 _"Bite me!"_

I paused, my lips ghosting over her shoulder. 

"There?" I asked, hardly aware that I had done so. 

"Yes, _there..."_

I set my teeth into her shoulder and bit down hard, like a vampire in one of her ghost stories.

She let out a gasp. 

"Don't stop...oh, Thomas, yes..." 

She usually only said my name at the moment of climax. 

I had nibbled her skin before, but nothing like the bite marks Lucille left on her.

She hissed in pleasured pain. 

I had to make myself stop. Because I felt a rage so dark I feared I would tear out a piece of her flesh. 

~~~~~

On the eve of Thomas and Edith’s wedding anniversary, I decided to indulge them. They were my pets after all. I owned them both and they would do well to remember that. I would never be alone. I had my whore and I had my brother and perhaps best of all, Thomas and I were on the verge of succeeding in our mining venture.

“The machine is almost working, thanks to your generous investment, Edith,” I said lightly. 

“It was the least I could do,” she beamed, and took my brother’s hand.

Edith was clad in cream and gold and Thomas looked dashing in a beautifully tailored suit. Thomas handed her a waxy white candle. The single flame glittered in the darkness. I was wearing the same crimson dress I had worn at the ball where we all first met. My fingers ran over the piano keys and the waltz they had danced to on that night filled the air. The music echoed in the empty house. Back then, I had played this song in a noisy ballroom full of bustling guests. But here there was no one alive for miles around. I could almost hear the ghosts in the house, the ghosts Edith was so fixated on hovering in the shadows, humming the tune of the waltz. Edith and Thomas spun around the room, staring into each other’s eyes. 

_It is said that the true test of the waltz is to be so swift, so delicate, and so smooth, that the candle flame will not be extinguished in the hand of the lead dancer. Now that requires the perfect partner._

Edith was the perfect partner, so beautiful that even Thomas seemed to fade into the background, into darkness. 

“Would you be mine?” He had asked her that night, and now I burned with the desire to do the same. 

I had gone from being envious of Edith to jealous of her. It was a strange irony. 

I had resented the spell she’d cast on my brother but now I had succumbed to it myself. I wanted to pry her from my brother’s hands and gut him. I wanted to spread her out, naked and trembling, across the piano and fuck her until she screamed. 

And all the while, the candle burned bright in their hands. I wanted to snuff it out. I wanted to make them dance to my tune, to dance and dance until they fell down dead. 

But soon I tired of playing and the last note died away. Edith blew the candle out, stealing a shy glance at me. And I realized she knew what I was thinking the entire time. She knew I burned for her with my very soul, assuming I still had one, and she revelled in it.

_She knows everything._

I thought of the time she stole the key to Enola’s vat and strung it back on the keychain, thinking I wouldn’t notice it gone. Clever and plucky. 

The garnet ring Thomas had given her on the night he proposed was still sparkling on her finger, the gem glistening like a fresh drop of blood. The ring brought out the redness of her lips, the blush on her cheeks. I had been so angry to part with it, but now I knew the gem had bought us another gem, one that was far more precious... 

Thomas cleared his throat. “May I have a moment alone with my wife?” 

He was glaring daggers at me.

“Of course,” I murmured. 

Thomas held her by the elbow and they swept upstairs, Edith watching me the entire time. When the door clicked shut I followed them. And I saw everything they did through the keyhole. 

My brother and whore. They were beautiful together. 

~~~~~ 

I could feel my sister’s gaze burning into the room through the keyhole, so I was determined to give her a good show. Edith was none the wiser, of course. 

And when I was certain she had left, we cuddled on the bed, the sweat and cum cooling on our bodies. Edith lay on my lap, staring into my eyes. 

“I wish we could go somewhere,” I said suddenly. 

_I want to run away. Somewhere as far from my sister as possible._

_You are a butterfly and I would fly to freedom on your wings._

“Why don’t we leave?” She asked, and lowered her voice. “I thought I was afraid of the house and the ghosts, but now I think I’ve always been afraid of her.”

I sighed. I didn’t need to ask her who *she* was. “Lucille is all we have.” 

Her face did not change. “I left everything I was behind. Everything I had. We could live anywhere you want.”

“Anywhere?” I asked. 

“London. Paris.” 

“Paris is beautiful.” 

“Milan.” 

I fell silent, feeling a twinge of guilt for the things I’d done to Enola and all my former wives. I lured them to their deaths out of love for my sister. A love that suffocated me and was spoiling like fruit, despite my best efforts to hold onto it. And it all felt pointless, now that I’d realized Edith was my true mate.

I closed my eyes, Lucille’s voice echoing in my head. 

_You couldn’t leave me._

“I can’t,” I said, “I can’t.” 

But I really wanted to.

_I cannot be with her, Edith. And I cannot see you with her. Not anymore. I feel as if a link exists between your heart and mine, and if it were broken by my sister, my heart would cease to beat and I would die._

~~~~~ 

The next night, when I had her, I used my blades to carve my name into her side, so that my brother would see it in the morning. 

_Forgive me, but she is delicious, so sweet and so warm._

~~~~~ 

The next night, when I had her, I had to heal another wound Lucille had left on her. This one was in the shape of her name. 

_Lady Lucille Sharpe._

I stood up suddenly and pressed her against the wall, bracketing her on either side with both my hands. She was pale, trembling, her eyes wide and frightened.

“Thomas,” she stammered, “Thomas, please…” 

“There may be a way to escape my sister,” I hissed, “but there is no escape from me. I will be the only one to kiss you, to bed you. Whether you come willingly or not, you will be mine, and mine alone, do you understand?” 

I could feel the frantic beat of her heart, like the wings of a butterfly pinned on a card. And I was angry with myself for scaring her. 

Edith broke the silence by falling into a dead faint in my arms.

~~~~~ 

“Do you love her more than me?” I asked. 

I already knew the answer, of course.

“She is satisfactory,” Thomas muttered. 

We stared wordlessly at each other. No wonder we had gotten away with so many murders. My brother was the only man in the world to match me, the only man who had ever been worthy of my love.

But last night, he’d been so riled up at me that he lashed out at her, threatened her, made her faint in his arms like a damsel in distress. It was pathetic. He was the man and I the woman, but it should have been the other way around. He was soft on her. He bullied her with empty threats because he had no idea how to master her as I did. And he didn’t deserve to own her. I did.  
  


_We promised we would not fall in love with anyone else, and look at us now._

“Brother,” I said pleasantly, “we’ve been through so much together, let us not quarrel over something as trivial as a whore.”

“Don’t talk about her like that,” he snapped. 

A long silence. 

“I have a proposal, if you’d like to hear it.” 

I leaned in, my words the most intimate of blandishments. I heard his breath hitch and smiled in dark satisfaction. 

“I want us both to fuck her tonight, one after another. And I want us both to be inside her at the same time,” I said, “think about it. She would be beautiful like that, filled from both ends between us, speared on my fingers and tongue while writhing on your cock.”

_You could breed her while I bugger her from behind. The child would be as good as mine and it would bind me to her as surely as if I were her husband, not you._

His pretty little cheeks were flushed but he shook his head. “I don’t know, Lucille. I think we might be wearing her out.” 

I gave him a smile that turned to ash on my lips. “As you wish,” I said in a distant sort of voice.

~~~~~ 

I slid into bed, shook my wife awake.

“Edith, I’m tired of this farce. You were right about everything. I want us to run away, to be married for real. I want to show you the world and give you the world. I want to live together as man and wife, the way we were meant to be.”

She gazed up at me, my beloved wife, her eyes bright, her lips still parted in sleep. 

“I was wondering when you’d say that,” she murmured. 

We would escape together. It was a risk, but worth trying for Edith’s sake. I felt a sudden surge of courage. 

“Pack your things. I’m going to get us out of here.”

~~~~~

Edith, that shameless hussy, had bewitched him as she bewitched me, so much so that he had forgotten even the cracks in the walls had ears. That I knew everything that went on in the house. 

So, he was planning to leave me and take her with him. Edith. 

My Edith. 

Like he was some hero in a book trying to save the maiden from the monster. Like he wasn’t just as much of a monster as I was.

They would leave me and live happily ever after. And I would be alone forever, just as I was when they locked me away in that dreadful place.

~~~~~

We slunk into the basement. The elevator was all shadows, creaks, and groans, and the vats were bubbling. 

_Hush, not a sound._

Edith hung onto my arm. She was warm, glowing with hope. I vowed never to let her down again. I didn’t know if we would survive this journey but I would protect her from the winds and the elements with my very life, if need be. 

We made it as far as the ladder.

Lucille was waiting for us, clutching her steel and diamond blades in one hand. 

Her face was streaked with tears, incandescent with rage. 

I steeled myself. This day had to come. We’d been dead for years, she and I in these rotting walls. 

Lucille looked past me to where Edith was standing. 

“You chose him. Why?”

The words hung in the air. And as Edith stayed silent and stony-faced, Lucille seemed to realize she would never get an answer. 

“Before they put me away, I kept a little souvenir from Mother.”

She held up the axe, the blade rusty and blunt with age. I kept my eyes trained on her but I lowered my voice so only Edith could hear. 

“Edith, run. Go get help. I will come back for you, I promise.” 

She nodded wordlessly and left the room. Lucille did not move to stop her. Her eyes were fixed on me, rooting me to the spot. Edith disappeared up the ladder. And then it was just Lucille and me, as it had always been since the days we were born. 

_Always together, never apart._

I scanned the room for a weapon.

My eyes fell on a shovel leaning against the wall. 

_I will kill her._

~~~~~

_I won’t stop, until he kills me or I kill him._

*********

Ghosts are real. But I learned the hard way that the living are far more frightening. 

Thomas and Lucille were dead now. They could no longer hurt me. And perhaps they had been dying a while. All I did was push them over the edge.

I watched them fight from outside. I had no intention of helping either of them. And it was disturbing, the dark satisfaction I felt, watching them claw at each other like a pair of cats. And when it was done, I was the last one standing, the last living person to ever set foot in Allerdale Hall. I frightened myself as much as they frightened me. 

Lucille carved up his face with her knives, stabbing him through the cheekbone into his right eye. Stumbling, blinded, Thomas hit her hard across the head with the shovel. Lucille buried her axe in his skull, but not before he hit her again with all the strength he still had.

I seduced them, playing them against one another. I destroyed the decades-long love between a brother and sister. Their love for me was their undoing. I had gone from being a bookworm to a temptress. I pretended to be weak, to cry for Lucille and faint in the face of Thomas’s anger. And I knew exactly how to make them jealous of each other. 

Thomas and Lucille’s mining machine would never work, it had only taken a small sum of money to make them believe I was supporting them, and now I would see to it that the project was never finished. The Sharpes would never realize their dream of restoring their family home. The house would sink into the ground, and so would they. I buried them together in the vats. Their time was up. I would inherit all they owned, along with the money my parents had left for me. It was enough money to start my writing career all over again. 

And my revenge for Father and Alan was finally complete.

Why, then, did I feel so empty? 

I was alone now, more so than I had ever been. I stood in the great hall of the house. And all the ghosts of the past were gathered before me, swirling in a mass of black, red, and white. They were all there, Enola and her little doggie, Margaret and Pamela, Lucille’s child. Father, Mother, and even Lady Beatrice Sharpe. And last of all, Alan. He was white as the winter sky. At the sight of him, I choked up. His death was my fault. I had deprived his sister of her brother and his mother of her son. 

Alan’s mother had never thought well of me. Now I understood why. I had been so steeped in books, so consumed by my own wild imagination, that I couldn’t see facts staring me in the face. 

_She’s our very own Jane Austen._

_She died an old maid, didn’t she?_

My reply had been arch and saucy, coming from a girl: 

_Actually, I'd rather be Mary Shelley. She died a widow._

And now it seemed I would. I was a widow, many times over. 

Lucille and Thomas were dead. They had both been as husbands to me. And I had loved them in my own way, much as I loved Sheridan le Fanu and Bram Stoker’s books as a child. 

I loved them, but I wasn’t like them. They had claimed me, but I could never have been happy living with them, knowing what they’d done. They had loved me as Dracula and Carmilla loved their hapless prey. Their love for me, their love for each other...it was a monstrous love, and it made monsters of us all. 

No one could have loved me more. No one, that is, save Alan. But Alan was dead too. Earthly bliss was not to be ours, I thought with a fresh stab of grief. Maybe in another lifetime, I would have been Marianne Dashwood from Jane Austen’s book _Sense and Sensibility,_ I would have realized the truth about Thomas and Lucille long ago, I would have chosen Alan like Marianne chose Colonel Brandon over John Willoughby, and led a happy respectable married life. 

_Maybe in another lifetime, I’ll see you again..._

I ran my finger over his cheek; he leaned into my touch, and disappeared. And one by one, all the ghosts vanished, melting away in the shadows until only my memories of Lucille and Thomas were left. 

Ghosts are a metaphor for the past. There are things that tie them to a place, very much like they do us. Some remain tethered to a patch of land, the spilling of blood, a terrible crime. There are others that hold onto an emotion, a drive, a loss, revenge, or love. I could almost hear their voices, the sound of Lucille’s piano and Thomas’s heels clacking on the floor. And I knew then...they would never go away. 

Not from Allerdale Hall. Crimson Peak. 

I couldn’t stay here anymore. I still had many ghost stories to write before my days were done. The sunlight was streaking through the window, making the snow glitter like diamonds and crystal. I got my cloak, pulled open the heavy door, and stepped into the dazzling sunshine. 

*********


End file.
